India Battles HIV/AIDS Drug Shortage As Some Firms Halt Supply

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India is facing a shortage of HIV/AIDS drugs
provided under the government's free medicine program after some
drugmakers halted supplies due to delayed payments, leaving
thousands of patients without treatment, activists said.

India's National AIDS Control Organization (NACO), a unit of the
healthcare ministry, procures antiretroviral drugs for treating
HIV/AIDS from companies through a tender process and supplies the
drugs to healthcare providers across the country.

Some drugmakers stopped participating in the government's tender
process over the past year because of delays in getting paid,
creating a shortage, said Leena Menghaney, an activist with the
medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF).

India had the third-largest number of people living with HIV in
the world at the end of 2013 and accounts for about four out of
10 people living with HIV in the Asian region, according to the
U.N. AIDS program UNAIDS.

"The supply chain has broken down, tenders have not been filled.
As a result there are not enough drugs in the program to meet the
needs of the people. Patients have been told to fend for
themselves," Menghaney told Reuters.

"No manufacturer who supplies to the national program, where the
margins are miniscule, should have to be faced with payment
delays. But the way to deal with that is not to boycott the
program."

Officials at NACO in New Delhi were not available to comment.

Delhi Network of Positive People, a trust that works with
HIV/AIDS patients, is planning to file a lawsuit against the
government over the shortage of the life-saving drugs in various
states, said its president, Vikas Ahuja.

India has been providing free antiretroviral drugs for HIV
treatment since 2004, but only 50 percent of those eligible for
the treatment were getting it in 2012, a report last year by the
World Health Organization showed.

(Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Matt Driskill)

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